US Federal prosecutors will call 11 new Rwandan witnesses to testify at the retrial of a Manchester woman accused of lying about her role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide to illegally enter the United States and become a citizen.
The 11 Rwandan citizens did not testify at Beatrice Munyenyezi’s first trial in U.S. District Court in Concord – which ended in mistrial last March after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict on the two counts of unlawfully procuring citizenship.
Trial begins with jury selection Feb. 4.
The government also may call some – but not likely all – of the witnesses who previously testified when Munyenyezi, 43, stands trial a second time.
The government accuses Munyenyezi of presiding over murders, rapes and kidnappings in her Rwandan homeland, then lying about her role in the mass killings of mostly ethnic Tutsis on her refugee application in 1995 and when she applied for U.S. citizenship in 2002.
Munyenyezi arrived in New York City in 1998 as a refugee, moved to New Hampshire in 2002 and became a citizen in 2003. She was living with her three daughters in Manchester when she was arrested in 2010.
At her 2012 trial, prosecutors argued Munyenyezi belonged to the ruling Hutu political party and was a ring leader of the extremist youth militia that ordered killings and gang rapes from a roadblock she worked outside a hotel owned by her husband’s family in the Butare province of Rwanda.
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